Quick Tips

I used to hate buying greeting cards.  It was mostly a last-minute rush, and you have to jostle with other people in the card aisle who are all also frantically trying to find the perfect card at the last minute.  Then I stumbled across the best thing ever, printable greeting cards from Etsy.

It started when my oldest got married and left her extra invitation envelopes lying about, and then I had envelopes already there that I could use, but once I realized how gloriously simple it was to click, download and print, I got serious about it and totally stocked myself up to never have to run to the store for a greeting card again.

It’s super easy to search for cards that are specific for the occasion and target the specific interests of someone, without having to rummage through racks of cards at Target along with everyone else.

To set yourself up for winning at greeting cards, you will need the following supplies:

1. A color printer
2. Card stock paper
3. Card envelopes (7.25″ x 5.25″, 6.5″ x 4.75″)
4. A paper cutter (optional, but super useful!)

Buying paper and two sizes of envelopes will run under $20, and that’s 100 cards!

Etsy has so many fun options — like this hedgehog birthday card, for my middle daughter who loves hedgehogs, a pretty wedding card, this great Father’s Day card with a beautiful watercolor forest, or this punny baby card.

June is birthday month for us, and my niece had a baby shower this past weekend too, but I was able to spend ten minutes printing cards and assembling packages after the babies went to bed, all without leaving the house.  It’s such a timesaver!

I stumbled across these amazing laundry bags, and ordered two, and now I’m totally hooked, and keep thinking of more things I can use these laundry bags for!  These bags are well made and sturdy, come in lots of different colors, and are super cheap.  It’s the laundry bag trifecta!

1. Store Parts and Pieces of Items

We have two pack n’ plays for the twins, and they came with little bassinet and changing table attachments, which would be ludicrous to use with our giant almost 1-year-olds, but we still use the pack n’ plays all the time, and I want to keep the pieces around for when we pass them on to someone else to use.  But they are kind of big and clunky, and take up too much room, and the twins liked to get into them when they were stacked in the corner of my office, and I wasn’t sure they should start using the metal pieces as some kind of toddler-dueling-weapon, so I stuck them all in a giant laundry bag, and now they can live in the garage without getting dusty.  Yay!

2. Make Quick To-Go Bags

I like having bags of things already pre-packed, so that it’s easy easier to get out the door for various activities.  I used one laundry bag as the lacrosse bag for the 7-year-old.  He put his lacrosse stuff in the bag, and we just hung it in the mud room until it was time for lacrosse.  Besides making it easier to leave quickly for lacrosse practice, it also kept the lacrosse stick from decorating the buffet by the front door.  To-Go bags are great to have on hand for any number of purposes — like a swim bag that has all the swim gear, goggles, towels and sunscreen in it, or a baby-eating-bag, that has portable high chairs, cups, and Cheerios in it.  (always Cheerios)

3. Bag o’ Sleeping Bags

With the giant sized laundry bag, you can fit at least three, and maybe even more sleeping bags inside if you stuff them in.  Then, you can take them camping and put the giant bag o’ sleeping bags in the middle of the seat in-between two children who are prone to fighting or just getting all up in each other’s space.  At a minimum, it will make it more difficult for them to get at each other.  In a best-case scenario, the bag o’ sleeping bags will be so soft and cuddly they’ll just lean into their separate sides and go to sleep.

4. Hand Me Down Clothes

If child number one has outgrown clothes that child number two doesn’t fit into yet, toss them in a bag, label with a tag that attaches to the drawstring, and stash it away until child number two is big enough for them.

5. Off Season Bedding

If you are fancy and have different sets of bedding for different seasons, like flannel sheets and heavy blankets for winter (my husband despises flannel sheets, so those are a thing of the past for me!) a laundry bag is a great place to stick all your winter or summer bedding and store it until the snow falls or the sun shines.

6. Actual Laundry

At home, we just have hampers we drag to the laundry room, but I’m definitely planning on packing an empty bag for all our summer adventures.  If I’m really on top of it, and the places we stay have easy access to laundry, I’ll even try to wash it before we go home.  To plan for this, I’ll toss in a small pack of laundry pods.  I don’t normally use them, but it’ll be a quick and mess-free way to drag laundry soap all over the state without worrying about it spilling or finding tiny one-load-sized bottles to transfer it into.